


Patria, Justitia

by iberiandoctor (Jehane)



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Bickering, Captivity, Character studies, Characters Trying to Balance Competing Obligations and Loyalties, Class Issues, Existential Crises, Hierarchies, How World-Views Change Over Time, M/M, Minor Character Death, Moral conflicts, Politics, Post-Barricades AU, Ridiculously Dramatic Characters, Virginity, Worldbuilding, philosophical debates, power struggles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:26:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25445368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: “The rest of us have mistresses, more or less, who make us crazy, that is to say, brave… It is a thing unheard of that a man should be as cold as ice and as bold as fire."Enjolras knows no other mistress save France. He meets the one man who feels the same way about Justice.
Relationships: Enjolras/Javert, Enjolras/Patria
Comments: 30
Kudos: 31
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	1. 1830

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kainosite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kainosite/gifts).



When Javert first set eyes on the young man, he had the impression of an angel fallen from the sky. 

The inspector wasn’t usually given to flights of fancy, but he would soon discover that that image was an apt one. The flawless youth was no well-meaning naif, but a student of the Devil himself.

Javert had initially mistaken the boy for an innocent bystander, caught up in the second day of what would later be termed the Trois Glorieuses. Javert had returned to the destroyed printing presses at the Rue Saint-Marc, sent by Commissioner Bro to seize incriminating documents overlooked during the police raid of the offices of _Le National_. In fleeing, the newspaper’s editors — criminals who had defied the King’s July Ordinances — might have left behind evidence not only of their culpability, but of who their co-conspirators might have been. Javert was not a political man, but the commissioner had given him names of various liberal Deputies and their allies who were suspected of a plot to overthrow de Polignac’s government.

Javert had picked his way through the wrecked, deserted building, and had managed to find the presses’ strongroom. He was rifling through internal memoranda and the proofs of the past two days when he saw a slender, well-dressed figure appear in the doorway like innocence personified. 

They gaped at each other for a long moment, and then Javert heard a dangerous rumbling noise.

As the angelic youth turned to look around him in confusion, the inspector belatedly sprang into action. Moving on instinct, he caught hold of the youth around the waist and dragged him under the shelter of the long writing table, just as the doorframe gave way, bringing the better part of the ceiling down onto their heads.

Javert struggled back to full awareness through a buzzing in his head and the taste of grit between his teeth. 

Part of the room had caved in; bricks and plaster and debris surrounded them, obscuring the room’s single exit, admitting just enough daylight to see by. Fortunately, the sturdy table had managed to shelter him from the worst of the collapse.

Managed to shelter _them_. Javert belatedly looked down at the youth in his arms.

In the dim light, he could see the boy had been knocked unconscious, and was bleeding from the forehead, staining his silk cravat. Fortuitously, he was still breathing and his pulse held steady. Javert fumbled in his uniform pocket for a handkerchief; when he pressed the cloth to the oozing cut, the youth groaned out loud.

“Easy,” Javert said; “it’s just a scrape. It’s the police; you are safe.”

He tried to temper his usual brusque manner in order to reassure the young civilian: doubtless a member of the haute bourgeoisie, judging by the boy’s finely-tailored clothes and otherwise impeccable toilette. Such a respectable-looking young man must have a valid reason to be found in this former stronghold of the insurrection. 

He soon discovered his mistake.

“What a contradiction in terms,” the youth murmured as he came around. “To say, _the police!_ in one breath, and _you are safe!_ in another! It is a paradox worthy of Heraclitus.”

Javert did not then understand. A workingman in disguise would not speak in such well-born accents, but surely a landowner would not reject aid from the police. He barked, in confusion, “Do you work for _Le National_ , then? Are you one of the insurgents?”

The youth brushed away Javert’s hand, and put his own fingers gingerly to his forehead, “Officer, I would refuse to respond on grounds that what I say might incriminate me… but no, I am not an employee of the newspaper. As for the insurgency, one might say I am a Libertarian, rather, for does not everyone who loves France desire that she be set at liberty?”

“A law student, then,” Javert said, relaxing slightly. A young man, decently raised and from a good family, might have his head swayed by the liberal ideas conveyed by professors who had no inkling they were leading their pupils down the path of destruction. 

Javert knew better, of course. There was no Law without Order; no civilisation without hierarchy: this was the bedrock upon which their world was built. Decent society must be protected from those who might harm it, and the revolutionaries who had taken to the streets against the king and the July Ordinances were doing untold harm to the country.

He attempted to explain this to the youth with no small degree of discomfort. More used to apprehending the guilty, he had never attempted to warn would-be wrongdoers away from criminal behaviour. He added, self-consciously, “Doubtless these are principles which your father would have vouchsafed, rather than republican nonsense that might get you arrested for sedition.”

When Javert finished, the young man drew himself up. He said, coldly, “My father chose to flee for his life rather than fight for his country. My mother died of a broken heart. And so, Monsieur Policeman, I have no father and mother save for the Republic.”

If his father was dead, this young man was not merely the son of an elector and property-holder, he would be these things in his own right. If he did not mend his views when he attained the age of census majority, he would exercise these privileges against the king.

Well, what of it? Javert shook himself. There were other misguided bourgeoisie who had also joined these protests alongside the workingmen and rioters; he would not stint from their arrest, as he would pursue all who had committed crimes against the state. Though — Javert was struck with the sudden dilemma — who was he to question the choice of an elector, born to the class which he, Javert, served? 

He would do better to procure their escape from this place. To that end, he crawled out from under the table in order to explore the collapse around them. Faint daylight was coming through the gaps in the debris, as was air; surely there was some means of levering away some of the rubble? — enough for the boy, at least, slenderer of build by far, to escape.

Javert soon found the cave-in had blocked off half the room. He rummaged in the table’s drawers for a helpful implement, to no avail. The rubble above his head shifted under his hands but did not give way. 

After observing his efforts for several minutes, the young man came to assist him, placing a surprisingly sturdy shoulder alongside Javert’s own against the largest slab of ceiling. But even this did nothing to shift the load.

At length, both returned, panting, to their original positions under the table on the floor. The search through the drawers had turned up a small flask of spirits, and after taking a cautious draught Javert offered it to his unwilling companion. 

“Thank you,” the young man said, and, after a pause, “and also, for saving my life. Don’t think I’m not grateful, Officer.”

Automatically: “My name is Inspector Javert.” 

It had become unbearably stuffy in the confined space; after his exertions, Javert thought he might be forgiven for slightly loosening his stock and cravat. In response, the young man tore off his own blood-stained cravat, displaying the white line of his throat, and shrugged off his fine jacket, almost as if he was laying down his weapons as a temporary cease-fire. 

“Well, Monsieur l’Inspecteur. The police were not thinking clearly when they destroyed these offices. Their misplaced zeal has hoisted you upon its petard as well as me.” 

_Not_ a cease-fire, then. Javert retorted, “The newspapers have only themselves to blame. They were printing sedition about the government, and the ministers put a stop to it.”

“Yes, by passing the recent unconstitutional ordinances, which removed even those limited rights of the Charter. You are an officer of the Law, Monsieur; how do you justify upholding a law that itself seeks to do the unlawful?”

Javert was silent. He was familiar with the terms of the 1814 Charter, of course, but he had never entertained the possibility that these July Ordinances, which sought to revise that Charter, could themselves be impugned. “This is clearly the argument a law student makes,” he muttered, and the young man smiled thinly.

“Tell me, citizen, are you sympathetic to the cause of the ultra-Royalists in the Chamber of Deputies?”

Javert was put in the unpleasant sensation of walking into a trap that he could not avoid. Stiffly, he said: “The police serve the king, of course, as well as the government of Monsieur de Polignac, and the country. My service is not just to the government of the day, but to France.”

The young man paused, staring at him more intently. In somewhat altered tones, he said, “You undoubtedly serve your country loyally, Monsieur. But what are your political beliefs? How do you exercise your right to vote?”

The youth’s fixed gaze discomfited Javert; this close, he could see, even in this light, how blue the boy’s eyes were. “You mistake me,” he said, finally. “Unlike my superiors, I am no elector. I was born in the gutters of Paris. My father was a convict. But I have made it my life’s work to guard society from those, like him, who would prey upon it.”

This declaration seemed to surprise the young man; he leaned even closer, and clasped Javert’s shoulder with a slender hand. 

“Then you are one of the people! You have lived through Buonaparte and the Bourbons; you have seen the common man starve while the bourgeoisie grow fat from others' toil. Do you not know that the ultras desire a return to even worse times: to the absolutism of the Ancien Régime, an end to all forms of democracy, and a government on high ruled by nobility?”

Javert listened to the young man’s fervent words. He would ordinarily have taken the hand off anyone who presumed to touch him so familiarly; he was surprised when he did not feel so inclined now. Perhaps it was because this youth was staring at him as if his views were in fact of import, as if there was something worthy in his countenance. No one had so regarded Javert before; certainly not someone as well-spoken as this young man, whom passion had transformed into a marble statue.

He grasped at those aspects of the youth’s polemic that he understood. “But France _is_ a democracy. We have moved beyond the era of the Ancien Régime. We have the Napoleonic Code, and the vote censitaire.”

The young man continued, hotly, “But do you not see? The government are bent on disenfranchising you through the census, the same way as they’ve sent you to fight civilians in the streets, and to destroy a building to silence their critics. Should not men like you be allowed a say in the running of your country?”

“No, they should not,” Javert said; this was a topic, at least, on which he felt able to speak. “The common man does not have the necessary strength. Many of them are criminals, all of them unable to rise above their station. Society upholds a citizen against a woman of the town, gives nobles and magistrates the right to make laws and to enforce them against the populace. To do otherwise would turn Justice on its head.”

He remembered a similar speech he had made, years ago, to the false mayor whom he had wrongly believed had been set in authority over him, who had been exposed as a criminal instead. Well-meaning libertarians might believe such convicts were capable of change, that it would be a kindness to re-admit them into society; Javert knew better. It was easy to be kind, but such false kindness destroyed Order; instead, the challenge lay in being just.

Bitterly, he concluded, “Do not speak to me about enfranchising the common man with the rights of electors! We are not equipped to bear them. We desire none of them.” 

The young man looked taken aback; his blue eyes narrowed, as if re-calibrating his thoughts. 

“I own that I am surprised to hear this,” he murmured, at last. “But perhaps I should not be… Those who have constructed society in their own likeness have poured the sweat of the downtrodden into its foundations. Small wonder that those who have suffered most are the ones who fight the hardest to keep the shackles around their wrists! They have been blinded by those trusted to bring them into the light, kept chained by those who have usurped the spoils of their labour. This is the mischief that we must seek to change, to free people’s minds as well as their hearts, to convince them their so-called masters are no better or more equipped than they are.”

He clenched his fist on Javert’s shoulder. “I will speak later of the injustices wreaked by the Bourbons. But for now, let us discuss the most recent scandal. For the last five years, the price of wheat in Paris has increased fivefold, owing to worsening grain harvests. Surely you have not been insensible to this yourself — a loaf of bread now costs 95 centimes when it used to cost half that price. It is the same for staple foods and crops. Rural workers sought a relaxation of crop tariffs to help ease their burdens. However, our king, bowing to pressure from landowners, kept the tariffs in place. The people of France are dying due to a collapse of agriculture that has never been seen before 1789; now, as then, the bourgeoisie is too blind and too self-entrenched to understand.”

The youth’s blue eyes shone with fervour. “You say the common man is not equipped to rule. But one might equally ask: how can the nobles, who have never known a day’s worth of suffering, be better equipped? One might instead argue that the monarchy is a parasite on a country’s resources. Under François I, in 1547, the national debt of France amounted to an income of thirty thousand livres; at the death of Louis XIV a hundred and sixty years later, it was two milliards. How can such wanton profligates seek to legislate for the common man? Do the people not deserve just laws that benefit them and all France, not just decadent elites who rule her with no thought but of themselves?”

Javert could not say anything to this; he had never even conceived of such large sums of money. But the young man was not finished. He said, softly, “You say you serve France. I hear you speak of your duty to society. Let me ask you, Monsieur, what is France but the people who live in her? What is society, if not the people who comprise it?”

The man’s youthful ardour was infectious; dangerously so. Javert had to reach for the acerbic tones that struck fear into the hearts of his subordinates: “People like you, you mean?”

“No. Do not misunderstand. People like me have squandered the faith of the populace, we are not worthy of their trust. I mean people like _you_ , Monsieur. You, and honest men like you, will be the saving of France.”

Javert found himself once again struck mute by the force of this unassailable argument, emanating, as it were, from these even more unassailable quarters. This young man seemed no older than a student, but his implacable altruism — a passion for his country and those countrymen lower-born than himself, a fierce and principled readiness to sacrifice his own privileges for the needs of others — made him seem older than his years. 

Warming to his topic, the young man continued:

“The Great Revolution bore but a single principle: the sovereignty of each man over himself, called Liberty. Where two or three such free men gather together, the state begins, where each man concedes a certain quantity of his freedom for the purpose of forming a common right. But the quantity surrendered must be the same for all men, which is a condition called Equality, and the common right engendered requires the protection of all over each, called Fraternity. The point of intersection of these assembled conditions is called Society, and that which connects the same is called the societal bond. Kings and governments do not rule and promulgate laws from divine Authority; instead, out of this bond entrusted to them by this assembly of liberated men — and it is a bond which may be freely withdrawn if the trust is broken, as it has been broken now.”

A lock of gold hair had come loose and fell about the youth’s bloody forehead like an angel’s. Not a milk-and-water cherub like those decorating the frescoes of the church Javert occasionally attended, but a haughty archangel, all holiness and fanatical conviction. 

Javert was drawn to the youth's words despite himself. He, too, knew what it was like to commit unswervingly to a cause, to deny self in the name of duty. Indeed, he had lived a life of abnegation and chastity, without the comfort or companionship of another, in service of Justice and Authority and implacable Ideal. 

Never before, in all Javert’s fifty years of life, had the Ideal ever had a human face. He wanted to reach out and brush the hair from those fierce eyes that seemed to see right to the bottom of his soul. 

“Even if you are right,” he found himself saying — and what a thing to admit: that Javert’s superiors might be wrong and this schoolboy, no matter how well-born, could be right! — “even if you are right, it cannot be lawful to revolt against the government. Insurrection is a criminal act, there are no two ways about it. Property has been damaged, people are dying — perhaps you did not realise this, but you must take it into account if you esteem the common man’s suffering.”

The young man grimaced, and Javert was put in mind of Lucifer himself: armed with a flaming sword, capable of immeasurable cruelty, striking down those who were in his way.

“Monsieur, I have no doubt what enfranchising the people will cost. Deputies have for years made every attempt to sway the ultras in government. Even the Charter itself is a compromise. The ordinances are illegal, and no answer can be made to these unjust laws save revolution: a purifying fire that will raze the old order to the ground and remake it into an equitable society for all people. It is a price worth paying, and I would not shirk from paying it myself.”

Finally, Javert shook the boy’s hand off his shoulder. Then he shook his own head, which was ringing slightly. In the young man’s fervent tones, he thought he heard something of the principled obsession that he recognised in his own. 

“This is folly,” he said. “Even if you can yourself defend these crimes in the name of justice, such a revolution will never succeed. The common man is intrinsically self-centred; he will never put his own needs before principles or your talk of Liberty. All he knows is his own stomach. This is why he will always fall into the easy ways of crime, this is why he will never fight for any cause. Besides, he is accustomed to being ruled; have no doubt he will be abysmal at ruling.”

This was what fallen angels did. They seduced with honeyed words and even more honeyed touches, and the worst of it was that, despite having seen this young devil finally unmasked, Javert was still half-swayed. An abyss opened before him, in which he beheld a different world — one in which he took up the electoral roll to find his name written there, in which he saw himself seated beside the mayors and magistrates at a polished dining table, in which Justice herself leaned in to touch his hand. 

He shook his head again. Abruptly, he found himself bone-weary. He had no idea how long he had been here in the darkness with the angel-faced youth, if the day would soon be exhausted, if it would soon be night.

The thought of being trapped here all night with this tempting young man made him shiver.

Perhaps it was just his imagination, but he could have sworn that the young man also shivered beside him.

There was silence for a long while, and then, very softly, out of the darkness, the youth murmured, “I see. Thank you, Monsieur. You have given me much to think about, as regards the real concerns of the common man.”

Javert took a deep breath. He was suddenly acutely aware of the press of the youth’s warm body against his own.

“Are you willing to admit that the common man is feeble-minded, and self-serving, and ill-suited for the vote?”

“No. Because he is hardly that.” The young man drew in a deep breath of his own. “Because _you_ are hardly that.”

Javert found he had to swallow. His throat was suddenly very dry. He remembered the flask; though alcohol was overwhelmingly likely not to help his current state of confusion, he took a drink, and then handed it to the young man.

They sat in the waning light, in this close, dusty space, trading the bottle between them. The youth attempted to engage him in discussion about philosophers and politicians and political writers, several of whose names Javert recognised, such as Rousseau and the Marquis de Lafayette, but most of whom he didn’t. He listened with half an ear, focused more upon the sound of the young man’s voice than the import of his words.

“Do you think we will be here for much longer?” the youth remarked, at length. He was showing remarkable composure in light of their uncertain fate. Still, Javert supposed fallen angels — or obsessive would-be-revolutionaries — would have no reason to fear death. 

“My people will come looking for me.” It wasn’t just bravado: the commissioner might not immediately sound the alarm on his own, but Monsieur le Préfet himself had been anxious to recover evidence of potential sedition. 

The youth shrugged. “And possibly mine for me.”

Javert frowned. “You admit it, then? The revolutionary cell linked to the editors of _Le National_ , this is why you are here?”

There came a soft, almost amused snort. “Monsieur, I admit nothing. Your interrogation techniques will not master me.” 

Javert was seized by a wave of different emotions, only one of which he recognised as anger. “Tell me your name, then. You are required to identify yourself to an officer of the law.”

“I am only required to do so if suspected of a crime, Monsieur Javert.” The young man was smiling, though, and it did not seem to be a mocking smile. “That said, I would share my name with an honest man who has shared his views freely with me. I am called Enjolras.”

Javert noted Enjolras did not offer his first name; well, neither had Javert. Enjolras did, however, offer his hand, astonishingly, and even more astonishingly Javert met it. 

It transpired that Prefect Mangin did hope the documents found in the ruins of _Le National_ ’s offices would be of use, for it was still daylight when help arrived on hand. 

By dint of shouting through the cracks in the rubble, Javert managed to alert the rescuers to his and Enjolras’ presence. Policemen brought ropes and a jack-screw, and finally conveyed Javert, blinking, out into the light of the setting sun.

Enjolras scrambled out of the ruins after him. Freed from the shadows, he looked even younger and more angelic than before, his lithe body in shirtsleeves outlined in the sunset, the colours turning his fair head into a crown of flame. One of the younger officers hurried to place a jacket around his shoulders, and Javert had to look away.

“Who’s this, then?” demanded Inspector Clément, a man not much given to appreciation of the Ideal.

Javert glanced back to meet Enjolras’ quiet, meaningful gaze. 

He cleared his throat and said, awkwardly, “A law student. He happened to be passing by. Someone should see he goes straight home, and not get mixed up in the rioting.”

“That’s a good idea,” the young officer said; he held on to Enjolras’ sleeve almost possessively. “It’s not safe out there; there’s fighting everywhere in the streets. Damnedest thing, even the citizens have taken up arms against us.”

Javert turned his surprised intake of breath into a coughing fit. The abyss loomed before him; on the other side of it, Enjolras hid a smile. Clément said, impatiently, “Yes, yes, be off with the both of you, and be sure to stay out of trouble. Now, Javert, have we collected all the papers? 

“There are still files in the cabinet,” Javert said, and resolutely turned his back on the sight of the angel walking out of the ruins on the solicitous arm of someone else.

After all, there was no evidence that Enjolras had committed a crime. These days, the police didn’t lock up citizens who did nothing apart from merely announcing certain views in private. Enjolras’ dead father, his professors, would undoubtedly advocate forbearance toward a young man who would hopefully learn the error of his ways.

On his way home from the station-house, however, Javert could no longer ignore the signs of widespread insurrection. It seemed that the common man had in fact risen to the occasion; hopelessly outmanned and outgunned, the people had nevertheless turned out in force and selflessly, just as Enjolras had said they would.

As for the nobility, the next days would see the Prefect ignobly flee the city, and Charles X and the Dauphin abdicate their rights to the throne. De Polignac and the ultras admitted defeat. The rise of a more egalitarian political party in the Chamber of Deputies seemed to indicate a willingness, after all, to enfranchise the common man.

It would seem Enjolras was right, after all, at least in one respect. The people might have been feeble-minded, but they had been prepared to die for the ideals of revolution, and shown themselves less ill-suited for the vote than they had first appeared.

Perhaps authority was not completely immutable, and society’s hierarchies could be changed for the better. Perhaps the people did merit a say in how they were ruled. Perhaps not all laws were just or beneficial ones, after all.

In the aftermath of the Trois Glorieuses, Javert happened past a looted bookstore. A small pamphlet caught his eye: Lafayette’s infamous 1789 _Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen_. 

He put a coin down, took up the pamphlet, and took it home.


	2. 1832

All was in readiness, as it had at been at Thermopylae with Leonidas and Drogheda with Cromwell. Like the Spartans, like the Puritans, every man here was prepared to defend the Republic with his life. Barricades had been raised, soldiers assigned to their posts, and sentries were stationed to watch for the invaders at the Rue de la Chanvrerie, in the Rue des Prêcheurs, and at the corner of the Rue de la Petite Truanderie.

From his vantage point at the apex of the barricades, Enjolras felt the cold wave advancing through the night. Remnants of the monsters of the Ancien Régime, unaware that their forerunners had already been defeated, that they too would soon be consigned to the bear-pit of History. Beyond them, the crest of Enlightenment shone on the horizon: heralding a time in which there would be no need to fear a rivalry of nations or the cruelty of kings, a century in which France would be a beacon of peace to all.

To the others in Mother Hutcheloup’s wine-shop, the wait might have felt tragic and terrifying at once. Enjolras, however, was prepared, determined, and tranquil.

Well did he know their bold stand was as likely to fail as it was to succeed. Insurrection was speedily exhausted; it had only a certain number of shots to fire and a certain number of combatants to expend. An empty cartridge-box, a man killed, could not be replaced. At some ineffable point, as if weighed upon nice scales of sacrifice and self-sovereignty, the price would be too dear for the Republic and for France herself to bear.

Where was that point? 

Enjolras had always thought, had vouchsafed it to his closest comrades, to Combeferre and Feuilly and Courfeyrac, that if they arrived upon that Rubicon of failure, their insurgency would offer up their lives as a symbol of hope. Even if the people abandoned the republicans, the republicans would not abandon the people. He was willing to sacrifice himself; more, he had asked his friends to do likewise, if it meant they would secure a sublime future for France and her people. 

But what if they could not? The Enjolras who had taken up arms under the successful July revolution of two years before had been willing to hazard his life and that of France on any prospect at all of the Republic. Two years of compromise — in which Bourbons had been exchanged for Orleanists of the same unfortunate hue — might have convinced him that such half-measures had been a mistake for which, now, thanks to the passing of General Lamarque, the nation’s last hero, there was an opportunity to make amends. Instead, they did not; the question remained, to which there was no easy answer.

Indeed, now the moment was finally at hand, the Enjolras of these barricades felt a sense of incompletion. Where previously he had admired the violent fiery purity and absolutism of a Saint-Just, he had later come to appreciate the more temperate considerations of Anacharsis Cloots. He had emerged from narrower forms of dogma, had allowed Combeferre — who, together with Courfeyrac, had been a tower of strength during these last two years — to persuade him that the Great French Republic should evolve into a universal human republic. 

He had once believed that a violent situation being given, he would always wish to be violent, to the very last drop of blood of each revolutionary. It had been the policeman, no less than Combeferre, who had taught him that such an outcome might not always be beneficial.

Two years ago, the inspector, Javert, had saved his life in the Rue Saint-Marc and had passed hours with him in the rubble of a deserted building, awaiting death or rescue, conversing on this very topic. At that time, Enjolras had been naïve enough to believe that all the disenfranchised of France desired universal suffrage and the liberty to choose their own fates. The views Javert had then espoused had been completely foreign to him: for how could a workingman so diligently work to protect the very society that kept him under the heel of the nobles? 

He ought to be grateful to the policeman. If not for him, Enjolras would never have expected that the people would be willing to trade what little autonomy they had for safety and security, that anarchy and instability might be seen as more disenfranchising than the whims of a hereditary sovereign.

Since that time, Enjolras had tried to put the policeman’s perspective into practice, as much as he had tried to put the policeman out of his mind. He had sought to ready the ground for revolution not just by pure polemic and principle, but by espousing practical measures as well. He had drawn other workingmen into his circle, especially Feuilly — valiant artisan, man of the people, so like Javert in many ways, but his polar opposite in most others. 

But try as he might, Enjolras could not forget the sight of Javert’s candid eyes, in whose depths an unenlightened but pure and rigid conscience had been visible. As a policeman, as an agent of the authorities, he had enforced the strictures of an unjust society and called it Justitia. Why could he not see that it was injustice toward himself?

It was because Javert was willing to treat himself with a similar, equivalent lack of mercy. A soul’s unswerving dedication to an ideal was something Enjolras appreciated; it was something he recognised in himself.

Enjolras acknowledged no mother apart from the Republic, acknowledged no mistress other than his idealised Patria. His soul, he knew, had no room for devotion to any other being. In the policeman, he sensed a kindred spirit; after all, who was Justice but Patria in a different guise? 

Enjolras was aware of the privation which he carried with him. The others loved their mistresses with earthy passions, even Grantaire, who felt something of the same way about Enjolras himself as Enjolras felt for no one save France. Perhaps Javert carried the same privation, the same self-denial, that would admit no passion save for his ideal goddess. 

If so, that would explain much about the inspector, who had come to represent the people to Enjolras. When he imagined Patria at night, he saw Javert’s face: the proud, humble, indescribable grandeur of that singular man, who clearly needed to be delivered from himself, like the people of France needed to be delivered from themselves.

Enjolras was interrupted in his reverie by a commotion coming from within the Corinthe. Summoning Feuilly and Courfeyrac with him, he descended from the barricade to investigate. But before he could enter the wine-shop, Combeferre approached him from the street, looking troubled.

“Enjolras, something’s amiss with the one called Le Cabuc.”

“What is it?”

“He’s very drunk, he took some men and wandered off, looking for trouble —”

He broke off at the sound of thunderous knocking coming from one of the houses at the far end of the barricade, and an indignantly raised voice.

Enjolras nodded Courfeyrac and Feuilly toward the wine-shop; following Combeferre, he doubled back into the Rue Saint-Denis.

They were halfway to the end of the street when they heard the gunshot. 

Running, they arrived in time to see the shabbily-dressed revolutionary lower his weapon, and the grey-haired old man slump against the window-frame. 

“There!” Le Cabuc said, triumphantly, dropping the butt end of his gun to the pavement. “That’s one old timer who won’t close the doors to the revolution!”

Enjolras felt cold, but he didn’t hesitate, even though he knew that taking action would be to condemn himself as well. If the sanctity of the barricades needed to be purchased by rough and ready justice, he would do what was necessary.

He seized the shoulder of the murderer. “On your knees,” he said, and drove Le Cabuc to his knees.

“Mercy,” the malefactor stammered, staring up at him as if beholding the avenging hand of Justice herself.

“You have a minute for last thoughts, or prayers,” Enjolras said. He saw the others had gathered around them at a distance, in order to bear witness to what was taking place. 

Le Cabuc trembled in every limb. Enjolras steeled himself to wait out the longest minute of his life. Then he pronounced the sentence. The insurrection required authority, and he needed to do his duty.

“You have killed an innocent before witnesses. As an agent of the Revolution, I hereby try and convict you of murder, and condemn you to death. And I also judge and condemn myself, in the name of the Republic.” 

So saying, Enjolras grasped Le Cabuc by the hair, and placed the muzzle of the pistol to his ear, and fired.

Before this, he had never so much as raised a finger to harm another. Now his hands were irredeemably stained with blood.

“Take him away,” he said, harshly. He made himself watch as the men took up the bloody body. 

He was committed, now, to laying down his life for the Republic, regardless of whether they succeeded or failed. For where there might be clemency under both the old regime and the new Republic for those who might kill in the heat of battle, there would be none for murderers in cold blood; the death penalty, abolished in 1830, had recently been restored — in time for this insurrection, and this deed.

The men around him murmured in fear and admiration.

And then a cold remark arose from the crowd: “There’ll be more of that before the night’s over.” 

It was a voice Enjolras had not forgotten. A voice that he heard in his bed at night, in turns sarcastic and filled with unswerving certainty.

Impossibly, Inspector Javert was here, standing head and shoulders above in the watching crowd. Someone had bound him in a complex of ropes that looped around his body and secured his arms behind his back; Courfeyrac stood at his left elbow and Feuilly his right. He had donned the garb of a porter, a half-hearted disguise. His hair was greyer than it had been two years ago, but there was no mistaking the bold, daring mien that had so captivated Enjolras under the ruins of _Le National_.

“As you mention, this policy of an eye for an eye might apply to you as well,” he remarked to Enjolras, as if there were only the two of them in the crowded square.

Enjolras found his voice belatedly. “What is this?” 

Courfeyrac said, “We found this spy in our midst. Said he joined us at the Rue des Billettes, but Gavroche recognised him, and his papers say that he’s a copper.”

“A spy,” Enjolras said, disbelievingly. He walked over to face Javert, peering into the policeman’s brutally honest face, the haughty regard filled with the serenity of a man incapable of lying.

“An agent of the authorities. It seems there are more than one of us here,” Javert added, glancing at the corpse on the ground.

“Why did you come? You know you will be shot ten minutes before this barricade is taken!”

“I did not doubt it,” Javert said with equanimity. “Spies infiltrate and steal information; it is our duty to do so, as much as it is your duty as revolutionaries to execute those caught spying.” 

There was a bitter taste in Enjolras’ mouth. It had been foolish to imagine that this proud devotee of Justice could be swayed even an inch from his straight-hewn path, certainly not by anything one young, privileged radical might have whispered to him in darkness. Honest to a fault, he was too ensnared by the nobility’s abuse of power over his class, and his own loyal, righteous nature, to discern it was a path that led to his own ruin. 

Enjolras drew in a deep breath. He had to believe that others would not be as blindly steadfast, or this revolution was doomed to failure. 

He said, “Indeed, this is our duty, and we will not stint from it at the right time. But now we need to conserve our powder for the first attack.” 

Which, undoubtedly, was on the way, and, like a faithful spy, Javert had been seeking to distract him so that the National Guard might defeat them all. 

It was foolish to feel betrayed; the policeman owed Enjolras nothing. Indeed, Javert might well argue that any debt was owed by Enjolras as payment for Javert’s own act, two years ago, in letting Enjolras go free. But of course Javert would have too much integrity, and too little self-pity, to call upon that debt and beg Enjolras for his life. 

“Back to your positions,” Enjolras told them others, over the lump weighing down his chest. “And take this spy inside, until I have the time to deal with him.”

Courfeyrac was frowning, as if he wanted to ask how Enjolras knew the policeman, but he held his counsel; instead, he and Feuilly dragged Javert away. As the other men returned to their posts, Enjolras noticed Combeferre rise from where he had been kneeling beside Le Cabuc’s corpse.

“What is it?” 

“It seems the police spy was right. Look at this,” and Combeferre handed him a grimy card, which bore on one side the arms of France and on the other the signature of the Prefect of Police. 

“Our Le Cabuc was also a police agent?” How many of these spies had infiltrated their company? The police were cunning as foxes; they would need doubly to be on their guard. 

In the distance, Enjolras heard ten o’clock being rung from the great bell of the Cloître-Saint-Merri, the place of the great barricade led by Charles Jeanne, hero of the Trois Glorieuses. It was a signal of assurance that they were not alone. It was also a warning: that all were now committed, that the final battle was now at last at hand. 

Enjolras put the card into his vest, and together with it, further considerations of spies.

“We’ll worry about it later. Let us now take ourselves to the outlet of the barricade. I want to be able to hear them coming.”

And, indeed, in the distance, he could almost sense the vibrations of destiny on the march toward them, together with their glorious death.

Mabeuf had been the first of them to fall: the courageous old man who had dared take up the red flag which the encroaching troops had shot down. Bearing their banner, resembling the ghost of those men who had, in 1789, put an end to France’s line of kings, he had ascended the staircase of paving-stones arranged in the barricade, and, holding the flag aloft, shouted, “Long live the Revolution! Long live the Republic! Fraternity! Equality! — and Death!” 

The soldiers had given that last to him. He had fallen, under a hail of bullets, staring up into the sky as if his demise had been a gift from the heavens. 

Courfeyrac had whispered that the man had been no Brutus but a simpleton, an old friend of Marius Pontmercy, in no way committed to their revolutionary cause. To Enjolras, it was even more admirable that such a man could rise above his usual meek nature to martyr himself for the ideals of Freedom. For as this one convert became many, so this meant that their great revolution of ideas might yet succeed. 

Enjolras took up Mabeuf’s poor, bullet-riddled coat as their new flag. He shivered as he beheld that old man’s dead countenance, serene and beautiful in its final sacrifice; he felt stirred up with an immense fervour. 

He had not kissed another soul since his mother’s passing, had never before kissed the lips of another man, but he pressed his mouth to the old man’s dead one, saluting the desperate spirit that had just taken flight. 

Rising from Mabeuf’s side, he announced, “This aged hero has led a long life and has had a magnificent death! Let every one of us here defend this old man dead as he would his father living!”

Energised by Mabeuf’s example, the rebels repulsed the regiment with their better positions. Originally Enjolras had ranged fifty-three at the main barricade and six at the windows of the Corinthe; after Le Cabuc had been dealt with, he had had Courfeyrac seek entry into the poor old man’s house and offer condolences to the master, and station Jean Prouvaire and other snipers there, as well as at another house on the opposite end of the barricade. They had broken the street-lamps in the area and kept their lights low. While the regiment had needed torches to survey the unfamiliar terrain, these also proved to be useful for the insurgents’ target practice. 

Taken off-guard by the bombardment, the troops suffered more casualties than expected, and their commander called a hasty retreat.

Enjolras took advantage of the lull in the fighting to convey Mabeuf into the wine-shop. Several men made a litter of their guns; on this they laid the body, and bore it to the large table in the tap-room at the rear. The table was empty; someone had clearly managed to dislodge Grantaire from his usual position and relocate him to another part of the Corinthe.

The tap-room, though, was not empty: it contained Javert, who was bound to a pole that gave the wine-shop its name, so surrounded by the truss of ropes that he could only move his head. He raised it now as the men entered; his regard was impassive, his dark eyes full of secrets.

As the other men finished with their task and returned outside, Enjolras stopped beside the pillar.

“First blood,” Javert commented, inclining his head toward the tap-room. “No doubt it will be my turn presently.”

“You won’t be so lucky. We are well fortified here, and have enhanced our positions across the entirety of the street. We have not been complacent.” Enjolras paused before adding, “I heeded the warning you gave me two years ago.”

“Really?” Javert’s regard was impenetrable.

“Yes! Yes. You opened my eyes … you showed me how hard it would be to convince those who have only known suffering and fear, who valued safety more than any desire to bring down kings.” Enjolras swallowed, remembering speeches, plans, details, over the last two years, all the while with Javert’s acerbic voice in his ear. “The people needed to be empowered before they could be persuaded that their lives would be better under the Republic.”

Javert said, “The people are far from empowered. They remain as weak and foolish and prone to crime as ever. I knew the old man you just brought in here: in life, he was seen selling his treasures to book-sellers. He was weak, and foolish, and now he is dead.”

Still feeling the old man’s cold lips against his, Enjolras retorted: “He died gloriously! For the sake of the Republic!”

“Did he understand what he was doing?” The policeman’s almost-gentle tone contradicted his words.

“I have no doubt of it! And even if not, his soul was transfigured, in his last moments, by the love of France.”

Javert made a scoffing sound, then his eyes flickered past Enjolras’ shoulder.

“More such moments are on the way,” he said, just as Courfeyrac shouted, from outside the wine-shop, “Enjolras, there’s incoming!”

Enjolras tore himself from Javert’s side and headed back out into the fray.

The next moments, minutes, hours, were a blur of orders and fighting and flashes of gunpowder in the thick darkness. The enemy had come onto the barricade in force; the insurgents had retreated to the upper stories of the wine-shop, the houses occupied by Jean Prouvaire and the others, and sought to command the assailants from above.

Enjolras, together with Courfeyrac, Bossuet and Combeferre, took his stand against the houses at the rear, unsheltered and facing the ranks of soldiers and guards who crowned the barricade.

The moment was at hand. Either the guards would be turned back, or they would shoot all the insurgents where they stood. 

“Hold steady,” Enjolras told his fellows, as they took aim against the soldiers, and those men lifted their own weapons at the same point-blank range. 

The two discharges took place at the same moment, and all disappeared in an acrid smoke in which dying and wounded fell aside. As the smoke cleared away, through the ringing in his ears, Enjolras heard a thundering voice, shouting: “Be off with you, or I’ll blow up the barricade!”

It was Marius; somehow, he had arrived at the barricades in stealth, and gotten hold of the barrel of powder from the wine-shop, and was standing over it, a torch held alight.

“Blow up the barricade?” said a sergeant, incredulously, “and yourself too!”

“And myself,” said Marius, and gestured with the torch. 

The soldiers fled. The barricade was free.

Enjolras set his weapon aside, and went to embrace their unlikely saviour, frowning.

They had repelled this first attack, then. Enjolras thought this victory would seem sweeter, more triumphant. But this fact galled him: two years of meticulous planning and provisioning and tactics had come to naught; it had been the blind luck and foolhardiness of Marius which had accidentally saved them.

The soldiers had retreated beyond the end of the street: they could be heard encamping there, awaiting orders or reinforcements or daylight with which to better spy out the insurgents’ positions. As Joly and the medical students set about tending to the wounded, and Combeferre and Feuilly supervised the clearing of the bodies from the battlefield, and Courfeyrac and the others flung themselves upon Marius, Enjolras went back into the wine-shop to survey their provisions and the spy. 

Javert seemed to have not so much as moved a muscle since Enjolras had left him. He watched Enjolras’ approach with the resignation of a martyr and the majesty of a judge. 

“So far, so good,” he remarked. “How long do you think you boys can keep this up?”

“As long as need be,” Enjolras said. “As long as France remains under the heel of kings.”

“You’ll be in for a long wait, then. You don’t have enough powder; I saw that booby of a lawyer run out of here with your last barrel.”

Enjolras shook his head to clear it. The policeman’s calm was deeply unsettling in a way that he could not describe. 

“Why are you here, Inspector?”

“It is as I mentioned. I came to infiltrate your rebellion. I’ve been observing your group at the Café Musain for some months now.” Enjolras could not mask his start of surprise, and Javert barked out a laugh. “You’re not an easy man to track down, though you did not stint to give me your real name.”

“You’ve been following me?” Enjolras reconsidered his original perspective: perhaps his words under the ruins of _Le National_ had made a difference after all. “You should have joined in our discussions, Monsieur l’Inspecteur; we could have spoken further of Rousseau, and the Charter, and freedom.”

The image hung between them for a moment: this robust workingman sitting among Enjolras’ dearest companions, supplementing their high-minded polemic with his practical insight, helping them sharpen their weapons both metaphorical as well as literal. Then Javert pricked the bubble almost viciously. 

“You would have been foolish to welcome a policeman into your midst. Having seen what I have seen over these last two years, I wouldn’t advise it myself.”

Enjolras exclaimed, “Hardly! You said yourself: honest policemen love Justice and serve France. What good would our rhetoric be if it could not persuade a decent man who seeks to protect society?” 

His voice rang out, those who passed by the doorway paused at the sound of his passionate words. Even Javert could not stand unmoved. His gaze did not leave Enjolras’; he heaved a sigh, as if in surrender. 

“Well, you convinced me that you are a man of principle, at least. And, in truth, afterwards, I did read some of the Rousseau you had recommended.”

Enjolras inhaled sharply. His burdens felt suddenly less weighty; there was a fragrance in the air that could be the heady smell of hope, and with it, an image of city streets inundated with light. Had he managed to win this man, after all, with principles and ideals of equality?

“Enough to consider fighting by our side, to put an end to war and bloodshed?”

Javert said it with the finality of a lid closing over a sepulchre: “Enough to know your rebellion is doomed to fail.”

Once again Enjolras tasted the bitterness of disappointment. As before, he should have known better than to feel betrayed: Javert was too righteous, too lacking in imagination and self-preservation, to feel any iota of sympathy towards what he had deemed criminal acts against the state.

“Spoken like a slave of the old regime, who blindly serves those who oppress him!”

“You called me an honest policeman, you know I serve the Law. But what of you? You say I taught you to see more clearly, to better prepare — and yet here you are, a gaggle of amateurs, throwing your lives away blindly for someone else’s cause.”

Enjolras found himself breathing more violently than when he had been upon the barricade. He calmed himself deliberately. “Is that not what _you_ are doing? You know I would have spotted you eventually among us. You have not even sought to properly disguise yourself!” 

He glared at the inspector’s tall body in its nondescript clothes, and saw something hit home in Javert’s face.

The policeman muttered, “If you are so sure this is what I’m doing, why did you ask in the first place?”

Enjolras frowned. He had assumed that Javert had come here in stealth in order to defeat the insurgency, but the police spy may have had another reason.

Perhaps a more indirect approach would ferret the truth out. “Do you really think us unprepared, Inspector?”

“Yes. You seem to have provisioned yourselves reasonably; I might question your choice of location, but you are defending it well enough. But you did not sufficiently defend yourself against bad actors. I mentioned the one you call Le Cabuc. I first encountered him in the guise of Claquesous, a member of the notorious Patron-Minette; I recently learned he was also an agent for our side. I had thought he had escaped from custody through my own incompetence, but it must have been an inside job. Regrettably, there are those policemen who shirk their duty to set aside self-interest and protect society.” 

Automatically, Enjolras half-removed Le Cabuc’s police agent’s card from where he had kept it in his vest, then replaced it.

Javert continued, “In addition, your timing is appalling. Do you think there will be a repeat of July 1830? De Polignac was unpopular then; now Monsieur Périer has just died in office serving in a cholera epidemic. And then there is the epidemic itself, which killed twenty thousand in Paris. Monsieur Gisquet has managed to quell the newspapers and press many of the National Guard into service. At a time like this, most people would not be looking for a fight.”

Enjolras could not help but consider the various well-known politicians and army men who had promised to join all of them on the barricades, whom Courfeyrac and Feuilly in particular had considered likely generals of the Republic, but who had at the last moment abandoned them. Were they not lacking in honour after all, but had considered the moment not ripe for action?

With an effort, he shook off this uncertainty. 

“Inspector, you have flirted with our discussions without any understanding of our thinking. The epidemic has caused irreparable harm to the dispossessed; Monsieur Périer aside, the nobility fled the city and left the poor to die in their droves. You speak of the Trois Glorieuses in 1830. Those warriors who fell then were sorely betrayed, the revolution merely exchanged one king for another. Their blood cried out for redress. Paris has long been ripe for commotion before this June; when we lost our last great hero of both the Empire and under the Restoration, it was the final spark that led to the conflagration.”

Javert made a scoffing sound. “By taking this opportunity of his death, you have squandered what the General has achieved for the people in life. This is an immoral as well as a criminal act.”

It was remarkably difficult to remain dispassionate. Enjolras stepped forward to stand toe to toe with the inspector; he was among the tallest of the insurgents, but Javert was taller still, and he had to tilt his head up in order to stare into the policeman’s eyes, searching for a hint of duplicity. 

“Answer me truthfully. Did you come here with the aim of dissuading us? Dissuading _me_?”

Javert’s regard was as straightforward as ever. Very simply, he said, “No. I know a man such as you would never compromise his principles. You will never willingly leave this barricade.” He paused before adding, “Nor do I expect to leave it myself.”

Furiously: “Even now, you won’t ask me for your life? Even though you saved mine during the last insurrection?”

Javert drew himself up with as much dignity as the ropes allowed. His chest swelled with difficult breath; Enjolras realised he was standing so close that he could feel the heat of the inspector’s skin through the man’s inadequate disguise.

“I would not expect you to show me mercy. In the same way as you would not show it to yourself.”

Enjolras’ cheeks were burning. Where was the leader whose coldness was only aroused by contemplation of the Ideal? His composure seemed to have evaporated under the inspector’s hot, challenging regard.

At least his voice remained suitably ice-cold. “Do you feel you made a mistake, then, two years ago?”

Javert blinked in surprise. He might have been a man who did not lie, but that did not mean he was not hiding something. If Enjolras kept pressing the point, kept staring unflinchingly into those candid eyes, he might even be able to discern what it was.

“I do not,” Javert told him, at length, as if the admission was disconcerting. “Not then, and not even now.”

Enjolras was loath to back down; he held the man’s gaze for a moment longer. The air between them crackled with suspicion and secrets. 

Then the pressing urgency of the insurrection returned, drowning out his need to shake Javert’s confidences out of him. Enjolras took a deep breath, and took a step away. For all his certainty as to the timeliness of the rebellion, it would perhaps be wise to revisit the mood of the streets to confirm the state of readiness for himself.

“I need to attend to the others. Do you need anything?”

Javert licked his lips, which Enjolras realised were very dry. “If you’re not going to kill me in the next hour or so, then give me a drink.” He seemed entirely unmoved at this prospect of his death. 

For his own part, Enjolras was aware that he did not relish having to kill Javert at all. He said, reaching for the jug of water on a nearby table, “The troops are likely waiting till they can better sight out our positions, so you should be safe until dawn, at least.” 

As Javert couldn’t move, Enjolras was compelled to help him to drink. Javert’s cravat had come loose in his struggles, and Enjolras watched the inspector’s bare throat work as he swallowed thirstily from the glass held for him; a rivulet of water trickled free from the side of his mouth and ran slowly down his jaw.

“Is that all?” inquired Enjolras, when Javert had finished.

“I am uncomfortable against this post. If I am to pass the night here, you surely might lay me out on a table like that other man.” With a motion of the head, Javert indicated the fallen body of Monsieur Mabeuf.

Enjolras nodded. He moved the jug of water to the floor, and, with some difficulty, unfastened Javert from the pole. 

Javert had been originally tied in a manner which fixed his arms behind his back and left him the use of his legs, by means of a rope fastened to his neck, forking at the stomach, passing between the legs and meeting at the wrists, the sort of bond which is called in prisons a martingale. Enjolras seized the front of the ligatures and led him over to the table; after Javert laid his tall body down on the surface, Enjolras used the remainder of the rope to secure the policeman to the sturdy wood. 

The process took many long minutes. Enjolras was breathing unsteadily when it was finally done; he took a step back to admire his handiwork, and discovered the inspector was also out of breath. Javert had not struggled, but the robust limbs, held down by thick ropes, still strained disconcertingly against the table’s wooden surface.

Enjolras cleared his throat. “Try to get some rest. It’s going to be a long night.”

“Not long enough for some,” came the dour response. “Have a care, schoolboy.”

Enjolras had left the barricade through Mondétour lane by moonlight, full of the confidence of a Brutus. He returned to it at daybreak, a chastened Cicero who had foreseen the collapse of his plans, and with them, his grand vision of Rome’s restoration to the ideals of the republic.

When Enjolras left them, the men had been full of hope, disdainful of any dawn attack; they had had no more doubt as to their success than as to their noble cause. Now, he was going to have to convey to them the news of inevitable failure.

For he had seen their death: the whole of the army of Paris, gathering to strike. Two-thirds were aimed at Saint-Merri; the remaining third was bearing down upon their position at the Chanvrerie. In an hour or two, at most three, they would be entirely overrun. 

And worst of all, the populace, which had not twelve hours ago been seething, was deathly quiet. From the printers at the rue Bergère and the labourers at the Rue de Grenelle-Saint-Honore to the marble-workers at the Barriere du Maine, they had been completely abandoned.

The inspector had the right of it. Those generals who had promised their support and then reneged on their word had been right. 

Their plan had been that, as with the 1830 revolution, this second day would see, in its morning, a regiment engaged, at noon the insurrection of all Paris, and at sunset, successful revolution. But Enjolras had now seen the truth of it for himself, even if Jeanne had not. There had never once been the chance of success.

The summer morning was warm, but there was winter in his heart. All these remaining, these brave souls, could do, now, was to offer up a token protest of corpses. The people of Paris, sickened by cholera and beaten down by years of systematic oppression, were in no condition to answer a call to arms. 

The question was whether there was anything else to be done. While Enjolras fully intended to see this through to the end, the Republic could ill afford the sacrifice of all those who defended her, here as well as under Jeanne. If the present’s insurgents were apprentices, the future’s would be war veterans; tomorrow’s barricades would be stronger and more successful when founded upon the bedrock of this day’s. 

He stole quietly into the shelter of the wine-shop’s main room, where his comrades were conversing and cheerful, tasting the victory that they were sure would come. He took a moment to behold Combeferre, Courfeyrac, the others, so dear to him and so indispensable to France, who believed in him as much as they believed in the Republic. 

He knew he had to address them. He just needed a moment to prepare.

Not unexpectedly, he found himself drawn back into the tap-room. The admitting of defeat to his enemy would be a suitable dress rehearsal in painful duty for the speech he would need to give to his doomed friends.

To his credit, though, Javert seemed to take no pleasure in being proved right after all. He listened to Enjolras’ unsparing account of the hopeless state of affairs with an expression that looked almost sympathetic. It was unsettling in a man who apparently had no such sympathy for himself.

“So what will you do now?” he enquired, after Enjolras was done.

This was, of course, the decision which Enjolras had been weighing all this while. “We are committed, still,” he said, at last. “We have shed blood on this barricade, and I condemned myself when I executed La Cabuc. As you say, we cannot expect to show mercy to ourselves if we did not show it to him.”

Javert mulled over this soberly. “That may not be so,” he said, at last. “The Code pénal does not countenance murder of a civilian in cold blood, but in wartime, the laws might excuse the execution of a spy.”

Enjolras stopped short: he did vaguely recall this principle of military law. “That would not be applicable,” he said, “and even if so, I did not know he was a spy when I shot him. I fully intended to murder a civilian. And if he was one of you, then I have committed an aggravated murder of a police officer.” 

“Perhaps not if he was a spy. This what I understood when I took up my duties — spies run the risk of being shot if they are discovered, and their executioners might receive an excuse from the full penalties under the criminal law.” 

Enjolras considered this. Before his reconnaissance, he had indeed still entertained the possibility of the revolution winning the day, and some of them surviving these barricades; now, the inevitability of his and his comrades’ death had finally entrenched itself. Murder was once again a capital offence under the Code pénal; if he and his comrades did not fall in battle, he had assumed their heads would all be forfeit.

Why was this policeman, who would not have shown mercy to his own father, so uncharacteristically advocating for a potential amnesty from the strict application of the Law?

Enjolras was also acutely aware that any such amnesty for the disposal of spies would similarly apply to Javert's own execution.

“We are all willing to die here. I thought you said you did not come here to dissuade us?”

Javert sighed. “I did say that. I do not seek that you compromise your principles. But there is no dishonour in retreating in order to fight on another day when the conditions are more favourable. You could even say that choosing one’s battles might be aligned with the notions of Liberty you talk so much about.”

Enjolras was taken aback. Indeed, the Republic was not so rich enough in men to indulge in vainglorious expenditure of them. This was what Enjolras was minded to convey to his people later: that the duty of some would be to depart this place to preserve the fight for the future.

It would be Enjolras’ duty to stay, of course. But for the first time since he had sighted the inspector in the crowd at the barricades, he allowed himself to entertain the thought of also permitting Javert to depart.

He had thought the rigid policeman could never be swerved from his duty… unless Javert could be convinced of a duty to a higher justice than that of the Code pénal, and the king. 

Would the life of a spy, an agent of the enemy state, be worth preserving, out of the forty other brave soldiers who stood with him on this barricade? But then again, would not an enemy agent in whose breast had been planted the seed of rebellion, an enemy who might even sway others on his side to their cause, be worth forty of the faithful? 

Besides, even though Javert was too decent to remind him of this, Enjolras did owe Javert his life and his own liberty; he stood here, freely, rather than in some prison cell in La Force, because of the inspector’s actions two years ago.

“Again, Monsieur, you have given me much to think about. Indeed, the duty to preserve the future is a duty that should be fulfilled like any other.”

He had possibly agreed too readily; it was now Javert’s turn to glare suspiciously at him. The inspector flexed his burly arms and legs as if testing the ropes that swathed his body and bracketed his thighs. 

Enjolras himself had been spared many of the privations of the flesh, but he was not immune to the physiological needs of men. The growing dawn light and the angle of Javert’s bindings now made clear what the darkness had concealed: the policeman had lain here all night, neglected, and his present condition could be plainly seen straining the cloth at the fork of his trousers. 

“Forgive me, Inspector, I see you are in need. If I assist you, I assume you will not attempt to flee?”

Perhaps if he was deliberately inattentive, Javert would do them both the honour of escaping. But the inspector seemed to freeze at this offer, turning mute and red with embarrassment, and Enjolras found himself wrestling with Javert’s trouser flaps and ropes and the chamber pot with only a minor amount of participation by the man himself.

Before Mabeuf, he had never before bestowed a kiss on another; he had never before taken hold of the intimate parts of a person other than himself. But surprisingly, handling Javert did not trouble him; with Javert’s substantial length in his palm, smooth and flushed and half-hard with blood, and directing its full flood, all was natural and strangely not unappealing; indeed, Enjolras felt the hot and uncharacteristic surge of his own blood in response.

They were both silent when he tucked Javert back into place and did up the policeman’s trousers, and refastened him to the table.

“Now you have assured me that you are planning to survive the morning, at least,” Javert said, at last. The colour was still high on his cheeks; Enjolras almost fancied it was his touch which had placed it there. 

“I believe some of us can hold this barricade until noon,” Enjolras agreed. There was a stirring in his heart; he now knew what he needed to say to his people, to rouse them to live in order to fight for another day, and it had been the work of this agent of the enemy.

He shouldered his burdens, and walked out to address the crowd, feeling Javert’s heated gaze follow him as he went. 

The second attack came two hours after daybreak, with a piece of artillery that had been brought from the wars, and a full regiment of men. Their barricade would have fallen if not for a white-haired man in the uniform of a National Guardsman. He had arrived at dawn while the men were debating who among them would be ordered to leave their last stand, and donated his uniform, allowing ten men and the boy, Gavroche, to retreat in haste. When all seemed lost under the heavy fire of the soldiers, he retrieved a mattress and held it in the gap torn by the cannon and saved them all; he was the hero of the barricade.

In that way, the barricade survived the second attack. But they had run out of ammunition, and Enjolras knew they would not survive a third. 

It was the end game for them, the gloomy hour which preceded their deaths. Such was the purchase of their future and the price to be paid for the past. This barricade had been built not from paving-stones or joists of iron; it had been constructed from misery, and overly lofty ideals, and miscalculation. 

He had not managed to persuade all of his comrades to leave him. “Here misery meets the ideal,” said Feuilly; Courfeyrac said, “The day says to the night: ‘I am about to die, and thou shalt be born again with me’.” And young Marius, whose commitment had previously been in such doubt, had said, “There is nothing left in this world for me but the kiss of a welcome death.” 

Combeferre said, pressing his hand, “We who die here die in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn.”

Enjolras did not have the wherewithal to gainsay them. If these brave men wished to join him on these stones now rather than present themselves before a firing squad later, then he hoped their spilled blood would be a rousing address to those who would come after them, as well as a cautionary tale. 

It was now close to noon. The artillery cannon had been withdrawn for re-loading; once the loading had been completed the barricade would be breached, and that would be the end. In any case, the regiment had blocked off surrounding streets; they were hemmed in on all sides, as were Leonidas’ remaining men at Thermopylae.

There was now only one person who could depart from this place and walk unmolested through the cordons of the police.

The inspector would not thank him for his life. He would no sooner have understood Enjolras' strange motivations than Enjolras' companions; in truth, Enjolras was not entirely sure of them himself. But what he knew was this: Inspector Javert was an honourable man, and in his fierce, chaste heart Enjolras recognised his own. 

Further — and this part was even less easy to comprehend — Enjolras sensed that they had somehow managed to alter the unalterable, and to effect change within each other. That such uncompromising, indomitable souls could have nevertheless persuaded each other: the one, that it might be a higher duty to live than to die; the other, that not all those who committed crimes were always deserving of punishment, if those crimes were committed in response to a higher calling.

Now he hoped he would be able to persuade Javert of one final matter.

When the soldiers broke through the barricades, they would likely shoot first and ask questions later. Enjolras knew he needed to release Javert before the storm broke, so that at least one of these last few warriors would survive.

Marius volunteered to take up the final defence of the barricade. Many of the others agreed to stay at his side, among them the white-haired former National Guardsman who had saved the barricade with his marksman’s skills. When Marius ascended to the lookout upon the crest of the barricade, the man followed, as if afraid to let that brave young soul out of his sight.

Enjolras issued his final orders in the tap-room: as to the dispositions of the weapons among the men remaining, and the last defence of the wine-shop once the barricade had been overrun. Feuilly replied in the name of all.

These arrangements made, Enjolras turned to where Javert was pinioned to the table and said: “I am not forgetting you.”

“Where should we take him?” Courfeyrac asked, softly.

"I will do it. I won’t be long. The little barricade of the Mondétour lane can be scaled; I'll do it there.”

Combeferre looked as if he might say something, but it was the inspector who said, with grave dignity, "That is fair. I have no objections."

The others unbound Javert from the table. Then Enjolras took hold of the inspector by the front of the martingale, as one would take a beast of burden by the breast-band, and, pulling the latter after him, left the tap-room. They crossed the wine-shop slowly, because Javert, with his impeded limbs, could take only very short steps. 

Out in the open, Javert paused to take a deep breath of the fresh air; he blinked in what he doubtless thought would be his last glimpse of sunlight.

The yard was full of insurgents arrayed on the barricade, awaiting the final attack. Enjolras knew he had no time to waste. As quickly as he could, without alerting Marius and the others, he led Javert to the entrenchment in the Mondétour lane and helped him across.

When they had traversed this barrier, they found themselves alone in the deserted lane. The sun beat down. There was a heap of bodies piled in a corner of the street. Enjolras steeled himself to gaze upon these last heroes of the revolution who had spent their lives too soon.

“Don’t wait any longer,” Javert said, quietly. “Shoot me now.”

Enjolras turned to him, and as the noonday sun illuminated the grey in his hair and lines in his face, he saw that the inspector’s eyes were no longer guarded, but blazing with a transparent desire that he suddenly understood at last. 

“You came here for _this_ ,” Enjolras marvelled. “You didn’t come to spy on us, or just to spy on us. You came because you wanted to die.”

This desire was mirrored in Javert’s body. Still bound in the unforgiving grip of the martingale, it was clear that Enjolras’ earlier assistance had only brought the inspector a temporary reprieve. Now Javert shivered in Enjolras’ grasp; the ropes that stretched the fabric of his trousers across his thighs revealed the helpless jut of his arousal.

Staring at this unmistakable evidence, Enjolras continued, “And you wanted it to be my hand that killed you.”

Javert took a deep, trembling breath as he considered whether to tell, in his last moments, the first outright lie of his life.

“I do not deny it,” he said, finally. “Well done, you have worked it out. We will make a policeman of you yet.”

“Pardieu, tell me why!”

“Can you not discover it for yourself? The society I serve is corrupt. The people I arrest are criminals, but they have also had crimes visited upon them. It may be that Justice requires a dismantling of civilisation from its very foundations, as you allege, and that in order to end the violence against society as a whole, it would be necessary to commit violence against this unjust state.”

Javert raised his chin. His demeanour was hideous and majestic. There was a world of probity and sincerity in his eyes; tragic candour bracketed his mouth. Pronouncing each word with pitiless joy, he added, “It would be wrong to serve an authority which is unjust. But I cannot disobey the Law; I cannot be anything other than that which I am. And so I have come to ask you to put an end to it.”

“Why me?” But Enjolras thought he knew the answer to this. It was the same emotion that beat within his own breast.

Javert had been the high priest of the Law, had held its ideals more closely to his bosom than any mistress. In the course of his strict life of isolation and chastity, he had never known the caress of a lover — as had been made amply clear when Enjolras had touched him.

It had been the first time for Enjolras, too.

He put his pistol in his belt, and pulled out his knife; he stepped closer to the inspector and placed his arm around Javert’s neck. 

Javert smelled of sweat and gunpowder and honest toil; his earthy scent held nothing of the Ideal, but to Enjolras this was the unabashed odour of France on the cusp of her liberation. Javert bent his neck willingly enough to Enjolras’ knife, his tall body responding, despite itself, to Enjolras’ embrace.

Enjolras cut the martingale around Javert's neck, then he cut the cords around Javert's wrists, then, bending down, he cut the cords between those robust thighs. Straightening himself up, he said to the man: “You are free.”

Javert was not easily astonished, but in the circumstances, he stood stock-still in shock, open-mouthed and motionless, and helplessly erect.

“I mean it, Inspector. I am releasing you on your honour. You say you cannot be anything than what you are. I agree: indeed, you are a man who does his duty, not shirks from it. There will be need of such honest men in the new Republic.” 

He had accused the inspector of doing the very thing Javert had charged him with: squandering his life for someone else’s cause. _Is that not what you are doing? You know I would have spotted you eventually._ Now he realised that Javert had been counting on it. But he had not counted on Enjolras esteeming the life that Javert had sought to throw away. 

Javert scowled in confusion. “You must end it! Or I will be forced to arrest you and your comrades, and bring the weight of the law on your heads.” 

“I doubt you will have the opportunity. For we will not leave this place; we will fight to the last man.”

“You need not do so. As I said: there may be no death for having executed Le Cabuc as a spy. Or, as it happens, for executing me.” Javert gave him a wry smile. “Is there a standard penalty for the lesser offence of rioting?”

Enjolras shrugged. “The maximum is now death, as you know, but for politically motivated offences the likely penalty is deportation, or five to fifteen years of hard labour. I would rather die.”

“As would I,” Javert pointed out. “And here you are, suggesting that I have a duty to live.”

Enjolras glared at him. “Here you are, suggesting I compromise my principles!”

“Perhaps I should say you ought not compromise your ideals out of a misguided sense of kindness to me. I would not wish such kindness. And how can you spare me without casting all your decisions into injustice?”

Here was the grave, noble man who did not believe in compassion for anyone, least of all himself. Enjolras placed his hands on the inspector’s shoulders and took fervent hold of him.

“I can, Monsieur, because, you will be the saving of the Republic, not me. Remember what I said to you at the Rue Saint-Marc? Here, I have squandered the faith of the people with hubris; whereas you, and men like you, will liberate France.”

Javert looked down at him and his lips curved in a reluctant smile. “I wouldn’t feel too badly about the hubris, your plan was not that poor. And, you are right, I did come here because I wished to tender my resignation to God, and thought I could persuade you to act as God’s instrument. But there was another reason.”

“You sought your death. You wanted me to kill you!”

Javert looked away, as if he could no longer meet his eyes. “I did. I also wanted to see you one last time.”

“Me?” Enjolras said again; this time he wasn’t surprised. Through Javert’s broad body, he felt the reluctant thunder of that proud heart rousing to another’s.

“Yes. You did your duty to execute Le Cabuc, knowing that by so doing you had condemned yourself. You, and not any noble or any king, are truly worthy of the people's trust.”

Enjolras’ own heart was beating erratically, more loudly than it had ever done in the heat of battle. He raised his voice to speak over it. “As are you. Which is why I am asking you to leave this place. It is easy to be kind, and to resign from the unpalatable, and to die; it is a much more difficult thing to continue to serve, to continue to live.”

Javert clenched his hands over Enjolras’. He hissed, “If you killed me now, it would be a kindness.”

“I will not do you that kindness, Inspector.” Enjolras gripped back as tightly as he was able. “You should not be permitted to resign until the work is completed. You should live, to serve Patria, and secure the future of our Republic.”

“To serve Justice,” Javert corrected him, reflexively. A further moment of uncertainty clouded his face before his lips thinned in decision. “Very well, then. I will let a criminal charge me with my life. Let me compound the offence by asking you to come with me.”

Enjolras was immeasurably moved by this gesture of surrender, and more, this unlooked-for compassion, in a man who had never demonstrated it in all of his life. He drew Javert close; in those fierce eyes, an abyss had opened, and beyond it, still a long way off, a shining new world. 

“My place is here, on these barricades, where I sent good men to their deaths. Let me send you to make amends in my stead.”

One of them should live to carry on the fight: it was right, and just, that it be the one who was better equipped for it.

Javert leaned closer. His transparent regard made good on the promise of an undiscovered country: where, for the first time, each of them knew he was understood.

“You have stolen my death,” he said fervently.

“I am sorry for it,” said Enjolras, and reached up to demonstrate his trenchant lack of regret. 

Enjolras had given his first kiss to the dead Mabeuf; he gave his second to this living man. The first was a sign of veneration for the past, this second, his passion for the future. It was a kiss as much of political commitment as it was a pledge of his heart: a promise of fidelity, loyalty, an end to self-abnegation, solitude, and — in the rough clench of this man’s arms, the hot rush of blood, the unschooled embrace — an end to his long-held chastity. 

To love was to wish for life. Clasped against the inspector’s body, his pulse pounding in the same frantic rhythm as Javert’s, Enjolras was aware he had never wanted more to live than at this moment of his death.

He pulled himself away with an effort, putting his heart to the sword.

“Go now.”

Beyond the little barricade came an ominous rumbling sound. The cannon was being slowly wheeled across cobblestones, and there came the sound of twenty rifles cocked in response. Still Javert hesitated, and Enjolras exclaimed, “If you won’t fight by my side, then go! Live for me.”

Javert paused for one moment longer. His mouth, red from Enjolras’ kisses, twisted into a sneer; likely because it knew no gentler expression. “You haven’t heard the last of this,” he said. 

“Be off with you,” Enjolras said firmly. There was no room within either of them for tenderness or tears of farewell.

Javert retreated slowly. A moment later, he turned the corner of the Rue des Prêcheurs.

Enjolras returned over the wall, where Combeferre and Courfeyrac were waiting. All was in readiness: these last Spartans, preparing to sell their lives bravely and dearly as they could.

Combeferre observed: “We listened for you, but we did not hear a shot.”

Enjolras was bone-weary and could not dissemble to his most stout companions. “It was because I didn’t shoot him. He will serve the Republic in his own way.”

They looked at each other; if Combeferre took account of Enjolras’ disarrayed attire, he withheld comment. 

Instead, as the sentries bellowed an alarm, Courfeyrac said, “As will we serve it now,” and then, with a great roar of cannon-fire, the third and final attack arrived at last.

The audacity of death was thick upon the barricades. Time had ceased to flow in its ordinary manner: hours and moments filled with smoke and the acrid stench of slaughter. Enjolras saw men take up their arms and lose them, shouting the name of the Republic as they fell; he saw Marius plummet from the top of the barricade amid a hail of grapeshot and could not see if he lived or died or even where he landed. 

Those who were left retreated to the wine-shop and held it as long as they could. Soon, they were each cut down, until there was only one of them left: swaying on his feet after the fearful four and twenty hours which had elapsed, as though he had already crossed over to the other side and was bearing sole witness to the execution that was to come. 

No, not one, but two — Grantaire, once thought incapable of believing, of thinking, of living, and of dying; Grantaire had awakened and arrived at his side, asking for permission to hold his hand, a permission which Enjolras, going unchastely to his own death, was now not unwilling to give.

Twelve soldiers lined up in the corner opposite them, and made ready their guns.

“Take aim,” a sergeant shouted. 

As the men raised their rifles, someone else shouted, “Hold your fire! By order of the Prefect of Police in Paris!”

“What the actual devil is going on,” an officer demanded as a tall, familiar figure in a policeman’s coat strode into view, waving a small circular disc that Enjolras vaguely recognised.

Inspector Javert announced in authoritative tones: 

“I have just come from the Prefect. Here is my badge of authority. They want him taken alive for the trial. They want all of them alive.”

“This is outrageous, Inspector. This is the insurgent they call Apollo; he has shot many, and owes us a death.” 

Javert continued, firmly, as if he had not only just learned to lie: “He’s also a police agent. If you search him, you’ll find identity papers made out to one of his aliases.”

Enjolras opened his mouth to protest, but he realised he was no longer on his feet. The room spun around him; his vision whirled with darkness; he was not sure if he was dying, or if he would live. There was a great clamour of voices above him, which eventually conveyed that the men seemed to not have shot him after all, and were now debating his disposal. 

Finally, Inspector Javert’s harsh face swam into view. Enjolras had seen nothing that was more compelling and at the same time more infuriating.

Javert murmured, “I’ve now stolen your death. And I’m as sorry about it as you were.”

Enjolras tried to say, "That is fair,” but no words came, and he finally slid down into the dark.


	3. 1834

The stone walls of Sainte-Pélagie had seen a noted history. During the 1789 revolution, the infamous structure had been home to political prisoners such as Madame Roland and Grace Dalrymple Elliott; thereafter, to provocateurs like the Marquis de Sade and the young mathematician Évariste Galois. Now, in this no less tumultuous era of the House of Orléans, in which heroes of the successful July Revolution would subjugate the heroes of the unsuccessful June Rebellion, it had found its use in the caging of other political luminaries — including the insurrectionists from the barricades at Saint-Merri and at the Chanvrerie. 

Inspector Javert had escaped criticism for his role in the first insurrection, and achieved acclaim in the second. The irony was not lost on him, though he could not say the same for his prefect, Henri Gisquet: bold champion of rights and freedoms in 1830, turned repressive enforcer in 1832. Indeed, Javert was both regretful and gratified he was alive to recognise the irony.

However, truth be told, though he did still rouse in his bed from blissful dreams of lying on the stones at the Rue de la Chanvrerie, or at the bottom of the Seine, such dreams had become fewer and further between. Somehow, Javert had broached the impasse between Duty and Justice that had plagued him since 1830, and survived being made to retract his resignation from service in 1832. He had not planned on surviving; but having been denied his death, he had done the best he could with his life.

 _The best he could._ The Javert of old would never have admitted to such less than exacting standards. It seemed, though, in this strange new reality — where criminals could stand at the apex of society with the red flag of revolution in their hand, and young men could lesson their elders and seek to destroy the ruling classes to which they themselves had been born — in this new world, such half-measures might be found acceptable after all. 

Compromise was far from the most unexpected aspect of his new life in 1834. That honour went to the person incarcerated beyond the heavy wooden door of this prison cell.

The guard who accompanied him spoke through the slats of the door. 

“Inspector Javert to see you,” he announced, addressing the prisoner in far more respectful tones than Javert had ever used during his own time as a prison guard in the bagne of Toulon.

“Show him in, please,” came the response. 

The guard turned the key in the lock, and Javert was ushered into the small cell that had, for the better part of the last two years, accommodated the infamous leader of the Chanvrerie barricades. 

Enjolras was looking well; haler than he had been since Javert’s last visit, when he had been suffering from a touch of the chill that often arrived in Paris with the spring thaw. The thin sunlight admitted through the bars of the window haloed him in gold. He needed a haircut; the men in Toulon had had their heads shaven because of the risk of lice, but Javert was not surprised that the vermin of Sainte-Pélagie had given this avenging angel a wide berth.

Here was someone else who had not planned on surviving 1832. 

But two years later, here they both were, still breathing the same air. At last, their dreams — which had in 1830 been completely opposed, and which in 1832, had nothing in common save for a desire for the moral purity of death — had shifted, in slow increments from their respective starting blocks, to come together in the centre at last.

Javert glanced back through the slats, ascertained that the guard had withdrawn, and opened his arms; in this way, too, they came together.

As always, Enjolras was a contradiction in his arms, both tranquil and vigorous at once. Javert never failed to be astonished at the miracle: that this flower-like young man would deign to accept his kisses, that he would return Javert’s clasp with a fierce strength that seemed to surpass Javert’s own.

“Are you well?”

“The same,” Enjolras said impatiently. He ran his hands through Javert’s hair. “You, though, look as if you have had a long week. Tell me, how fares our Prefect of Police?”

Javert scowled as they both took seats on Enjolras’ narrow bunk. “Not well. The Prefecture continues to suffer its fools; its runs-in with the Sûreté have worsened since Monsieur Vidocq resigned. The matter of the English guns continues unresolved. There is widespread concern over the department’s expenses, which suggest some form of internal corruption.”

“Nothing new there, then. What’s happening in the streets, are the people massing in advance of this month’s elections?”

“All is quiet,” Javert said; he could not resist adding: “The new Republicans seem unlikely to rouse much of a showing. Even the funeral of Lafayette in May was a muted affair. This is notwithstanding the government’s use of force in the April insurrections and its increase in army spending. It just goes to show that violent protest is useless in the present climate.”

The old Javert would have been surprised, but although political reading was a dull and difficult duty, it had paid dividends: not least of all in finally enabling Javert to hold his own in discourse with this canny political debater. He might never convince Enjolras that political crimes were morally deserving of punishment, but at least the man did now seem prepared to consider imprisonment as a morally worthy act of protest, as opposed to the paltry second prize compared to noble death.

Enjolras nodded. “The Republicans were unwise to trust Adolphe Thiers. He has shown himself untrustworthy time and again, not just in the matters of the April insurrection or the Lyonnaise revolts. Your Prefect, also, is eminently corrupt, though it might be useful to retain his corruption as a hold over him in future.”

“One should never cultivate crime for the sake of political ends,” Javert said, stiffly; he might have changed, but not so much as to permit Enjolras to convince him of this. 

Enjolras nodded, conceding the point, and Javert changed the subject. “Have you given more thought to what you will do upon your release?”

That happy event would take place in four months’ time. The sentences for offences of sedition and rioting under the third section of the Code pénal, as handed down to the Saint-Merri defendants, had been in the region of five to ten years; Charles Jeanne, their commander, had had his death sentence commuted to deportation and imprisonment at Mont Saint-Michel. However, for the surviving Chanvrerie defendants, the court had taken into consideration the mitigating circumstances of mercy shown to an agent of the police, and Javert’s own testimony; Enjolras’ sentence of two years without forced labour was seen as a victory for the defence team and privately also for Javert himself.

Enjolras said, “I will move in with you, of course. Your rooms are near the university, they will be convenient for my work with the students. I will try once again to test the waters with the young and vigorous.”

Javert sighed, both delighted and resigned. “I have said this to you before. You will be a recidivist; if you are arrested again — if I am forced to arrest you — it will go far more harshly with you than the first time. And if we are now to be living together, I doubt the assizes will find my testimony as compelling as before.”

“I shall just make sure not to be arrested again,” Enjolras said lightly, and Javert did not stint from rolling his eyes.

Enjolras added, more seriously, “I would not have you unnecessarily enervated on my account, though. Let us see if we can raise tomorrow’s barricades without the need for yesterday's bloodshed.”

He leaned in and permitted Javert to kiss him once again. Javert half-suspected Enjolras’ enjoyment of their love-making derived in some way from imagining being ravished by the embodiment of the people; Javert could hardly complain, for he himself secretly envisioned golden-haired Authority consenting to be embraced at last.

The last time they had come together, Enjolras had spoken to him, in teasing tones, about his devotion to Justice and Enjolras’ own to Patria. It was notable that they continued to serve, albeit with less single-mindedness as well as less chastity.

“Make no mistake,” Javert said, after a while. “If there is violence, you _should_ expect me to arrest you.”

Enjolras placed a sober finger to Javert’s chin. “I would expect no less.” Then he smiled: “A wise man who loved Justice once told me he would never expect me to compromise my principles. I would do him the same courtesy.”

Javert snorted. “I doubt that man was wise; he was just practical. Birds take to the air, water runs to the sea; political men who love their country would seek that which they think best for it, regardless of anything anyone said.”

The fire of challenge lit up Enjolras’ eyes; unlike embraces, he needed no persuasion to engage in debate. “Indeed, I have not despaired of converting you to my ideals of country.”

“Nor you to my ideals of justice,” Javert returned, and took the opportunity of Enjolras’ distraction to draw him into a third kiss.

Two years after the barricades, they were both still alive, though those lives had changed; they were not the same men. Neither of them considered this an unmixed blessing: there were definite benefits to a single-minded purity of service to their causes. But they were where they were. There was no use regretting the past. Besides, Javert found himself rather looking forward to many more years of a different kind of service, to a different goddess, and to the man who also served her.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by miss m ♥
> 
> Some aspects of Enjolras’ dialogue borrowed from canon, including [The Amis’ discussion of the 1814 Charter and the French national debt in 1547 and 1715](http://www.online-literature.com/victor_hugo/les_miserables/179/).
> 
> Details of Restoration-era political parties, the rise of the free press, and the French 1827 to 1830 economic crisis from [here](https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/charles-x-and-the-july-revolution/).
> 
> Details of the _Trois Glorieuses_ from [here](https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=10tiAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false), though the cave-in at the [ Rue Saint-Marc ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Revolution#/media/File:Saisie_des_presses_du_National.jpg) is fictional.
> 
> The offences of rioting under the Penal Code [(see art.s 91-108)](https://www.napoleon-series.org/research/government/france/penalcode/c_penalcode3a.html), as preferred against the Saint-Merri defendants, and sentencing precedents, are as reflected [in the St Merry trial transcripts](https://chanvrerie.net/history/saint-merry/premiere-audience/) on chanvrerie.net. Charles Jeanne was imprisoned at Sainte-Pélagie, Mont Saint-Michel (the island prison), Bicêtre, Clairvaux and Doullens (where he died in 1837). Too late for him, Louis-Philippe in May 1837 declared a royal amnesty for political prisoners, including those of the June 1832 Rebellion.
> 
> Javert and Enjolras' discussion regarding whether executing enemy spies would attract an exemption or justification to murder has very little legal basis in a non-military context (see provisos concerning excuses and justifications to murder in Penal Code art.s 321, 327 and 328, as well as in [Sanford, Penal Codes in Europe, 1854](https://www.loc.gov/law/mlr/Lieber_Collection-pdf/PenalCodes-in-Europe.pdf), which also discusses (at [16]) the abolition in 1830 and then restoration in 1832 of the death penalty). That said, apart from Javert's in-story reasons for promulgating this legally far-fetched theory, some degree of legal greyness might have been available, given that, according to Georges Boulanger (via a 2011 article by D.S. Bauer in the _Journal of the Western Society for French History_ ), no formal legislation existed in France to counter espionage during peacetime until [the Law of 18 April 1886](https://quod.lib.umich.edu/w/wsfh/0642292.0039.018/--georges-boulanger-the-third-republics-spy-master?rgn=main;view=fulltext#N12).


End file.
